The soldiers off at war get (and deserve) all the credit, but sitting back here at home while men and women are fighting overseas are hundreds of thousands of kids. They're waiting for mom and dad.
In a memoir about the life of a military wife, out in bookstores this month as the nation celebrates National Military Child Month, Alison Buckholtz opens the doors to her home off the Naval base on Whidbey Island in Washington State while husband Scott is at war. She shares the stories of her two toddler children's struggles to make it through ten months without daddy, and her life as a near single parent for the duration of his deployment.
It's a story we don't often hear. As Buckholtz points out in her book, Standing By: The Making of A Military Family in a Time of War, military spouses put their best faces to the world, even as their internal struggles rip them apart. They do it for their soldier. They do it for the military - and despite it. Because even parents, like Buckholtz, who have a deep respect (and a deepening love) for the military, get angry with it. Angry for the toll separation takes on their lives, and their lives of their children.
Pentagon numbers shared by Buckholtz put the number of parents deployed since September 11, 2001 at close to a million. More than two hundred thousand have gone away twice, more than one hundred thousand have deployed three times over in the eight-year span. Buckholtz's own husband is preparing to leave his family for a second tour in Iraq. And still, they carry on, dragging their loved ones with them on another adventure.
The power of Buckholtz's book remains in the stories of her children, Ethan and Esther, the reminder that her story could be ours. In her frankness, she is both eminently likeable and identifiable. She is just a mom. She's careful to assure single parents that she doesn't want to diminish their battles by claiming to be one (she has a partner . . . even if he's thousands of miles away), and yet she is. My already hearty respect for single parents who juggle it all grew with each page.
Buckholtz is also careful to remain apolitical, making this a book about the military family - not a book about the war. You won't find the names Bush or Obama in Standing By. And as a liberal mother who has always been pro-military personnel but decidedly anti-war, for that, I'm grateful. It let me read about a family and their love.
Soldiers serve presidents of both parties; they make no distinction in who they serve. They serve for the American people, and Buckholtz does not write for a president. She writes for mothers and fathers and little kids - the little heroes who say heartbreaking goodbyes and joyous hellos.
Check out a video she made for the kids, below, and get her book from Amazon.
Images: Amazon, Alison Buckholtz
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